The Whistler
by tinyemperor
Summary: "Step aside, step aside / Let the whistler through / There really ain't no help at all for folks like me and you" Mia has been running from her past for years, trying to navigate the dirty water of murder for hire. When she comes face to face with the Sons of Anarchy, she's far from impressed-until she meets the cold-hearted Tacoma Killer. (Happy/OC) Set in AU Season 2/3
1. chapter one

**Seven Years Ago**

The summer Lou broke her hand was when it all fell apart.

She punched this old guy in the parking lot of a convenience store off the highway near Amarillo. I was watching from the car, feeling half-dead in the heat of July, and only realized what was happening when she pulled back, hissing, and the gray-haired guy in the khakis started bleeding all over the pavement. It felt like we were out of the parking lot in seconds, all screeching tires and Lou shouting at me to _drive a little fucking faster, Mia_. The plates on my car were stolen, the registration too out of date for us to get away if we got pulled over. We made it back to the shop with no sirens behind us, Lou crying and cradling her mangled fist, and me cursing our luck as the car sputtered and shook down the road. She had the old man's dried up blood on her knuckles, deep red against the bruising purple and yellow.

Dad appeared at the window before the engine was off, eyebrows pulled together. "What the hell did you two _do_?" He asked, accent loud and long. "Lou, are you alright?"

"Her hand," I offered, bracing my head against the steering wheel. I had turned eighteen that spring and felt like I had aged fifty years since, all headaches and bags under my eyes. "I think she broke her hand."

The car door slammed, and their conversation faded as they walked away, Dad talking emptily about her dad being pissed and having to go to the hospital, and Lou haggling for one of his cigarettes, her voice high. She had been trying to buy a pack and a six pack of the cheap beer we liked ID-free, far enough out of town that no one would recognize me as my dad's daughter, and no one would see her trying to disappear behind a pair of expensive sunglasses. The old guy had given her a hard time in line, or something. She had tried to explain it to me in the car through gritted teeth, glaring at her swelling hand.

Dad came for me after awhile, staring me down through the windshield. "What the hell are you doing?"

I squinted up at him, a hand over my eyes. "Did she tell you?"

"She punched some geezer in the face, right? Pin took her down to the hospital." He pulled the door open, waiting for me to climb out. "Where were you two?"

I felt like I had sandpaper in my mouth, wearing at my throat. "Near Amarillo." The leather seat stuck to the back of my legs, slick with sweat. I was wearing one of the old work shirts from the shop, oil stained and embroidered for someone that had been fired years before, and I felt stupid standing in front of him, the shirt hanging lower than my cut offs. "I don't really know what happened."

He looked at me with the kind of eyes that he always looked at me with, narrow and strained. "You're alright?"

"Yeah," I muttered, pulling my hair out of the ponytail it had been in. "This car sucks."

"Leave me the keys," he said and leaned in to pop the hood. "I'll check it out."

The fans in the garage were churning dust and the smell of old gas when I stepped inside, warm air blowing the hair away from my face. Sometimes I thought that this place—the garage that Lou's dad had owned, where Dad and Pin and all of the others worked—was the dirtiest place that I had ever been in, all hidden messes swept under the counters and into the corners. It was just dusty and dirty, full of old grease rags piled together—always labeled "to be thrown out" but never touched—and the heavy scent of motor oil, stagnant in the heat of the summer in Texas. It was empty that afternoon like it always was around lunch time, when all of the guys disappeared for an hour or so, the only other person the outline of someone working under a car on the other side of the garage. He didn't move as I slid past, dropping my things on an empty stool.

"Lou hurt, or what?"

I looked where his feet stuck out from beneath the car, eyebrows drawn together. Dad always called him Mario, an Italian excuse for seedy behavior and a greasy mustache. He was one of the mechanics that I had always questioned the worth of, watching the way his hands hesitated and hovered around the parts that I could have repaired. He bumbled and fumbled his way around the guys, one of the few that didn't wear a leather jacket—a cut, like they called it—and had always seemed too aware of it.

He slid out from under the car, looking at me with narrow eyes. "You hear me, or what? Jesus, you an idiot or something?"

"Yeah, I'm an idiot," I said dryly, turning away. "What's Lou to you?"

"A hot piece of ass," he breathed, rubbing oil-black fingers over his wet forehead. "She legal yet?"

"Say that again," I muttered, "so the guys can hear you. You know her dad'd kill you."

"Too bad her dad's in jail, huh?" Mario's hand moved to his mustache, which he smoothed out with a kind of sticky desperation. "_You're_ the legal one. Shame yer dad's always up everyone's ass. You know all these guys would be on you."

"Too bad," I replied. "I could've beat your ass a long time ago if he wasn't always around."

He looked at me with a kind of disgust that I recognized—fat men didn't like being told off by girls. "You think you're tough," he said with a sneer, like he was talking to a child. He knew that I was right. "You'd never do it."

I scoffed, leaning back against the benches, my eyes flickering back and forth between Mario on the floor beneath me and the row of clean wrenches hanging on the wall beside me. My mind ran over what it would look like if I hit him in the face—a clean shot to the nose, or the mouth. People like him made it easier for me to rationalize my anger—the scum, the kind of guys that would never make the cut. For a moment, we were both quiet, staring at each other, his eyes almost loose in his head. He wouldn't even know that I had hit him until he came to, sprawled out and alone on the dirty concrete floor.

He started when he saw me reaching for the wrench, straightening, the wheels of the slide beneath him squeaking a little as he moved away. "What the hell are you doing, bitch?"

The metal of the wrench was cool in my palm, and I held it loftily in my hand, glaring down at him. "I'd never do it, right?"

The shuffling of shoes came up slowly, Dad scuffing his way in through one of the wide, open garage doors, whistling to himself. His body seemed broad and bent against the harsh light from outside, a shadow coming toward us. He looked up when he saw me, and then down at Mario and back at me, furrowing his brows. Below me, Mario studied his hands, rolling a little closer to the car. The weight of my words hung over us, and even the wrench loose in my hand seemed loud and obvious.

"What's up, Mario?" Dad said finally, one hand on the hood of the car.

"Just talking to Mia," he murmured, rolling further and further beneath the hood of the car until just his old sneakers were visible. "You know, just asking about Louise."

Dad looked at me, his dark eyes searching mine for some kind of answer. I just shrugged, sliding down to the floor, the wrench discarded on the bench. That was why I hated the mechanics without a cut—they were _these_ kind of guys, the wannabes that had gone fat and stupid waiting for a turn that was never going to come, still arrogant like they were a part of the club. Mario was a pig, like all the others, and I spent enough time hanging around the shop to know to stay away from people like him. Lou and I, together, had spent enough time around the shop to know enough about everything, even the things that we weren't supposed to—things about the guys, and their cuts, and the bruises that they wore after they spent the weekend away. We had found out the important things when we were eleven or twelve, still chubby, pre-puberty ugly. No one had asked us if we were legal back then.

I pushed my head against the clean window of one of the other cars, my eyes closed, hands shaking a little. The anger still hung bitterly at the back of my throat, and I was quiet, listening to the low conversation between Dad and Mario. _What a shithead._ I should have done it before Dad came in and the chance flew by. On the other side of the garage, the wrench shone out of place, silver reflecting light.

~S O A ~

There were bikes in the driveway when I got home, sweating annoyance in the hot air. The neighborhood was almost silent, everybody at work or hiding from the heat with air conditioning inside. It was a quiet place to live, regardless, far enough into the suburbs that the noise of the highway was too low to notice, and full of older couples without children. All of the houses were the same nineties ranch painted different colors, all kind of sad and old-looking. Our central air had died in May, a month before the real heat set in, and no one had ever bothered to have it repaired. Stomping up the driveway, my hair slick against the back of my neck, my head ached and I glared at the window fan propping open one of the front windows, and looking just as angrily at the brown weeds growing in the cracks of the pavement and the crumbling, age-worn cement of the front steps.

From the backyard, laughter and a dim conversation drifted toward me; all of the guys from shop would have stopped here for lunch and a beer, drawn in by the promise of a meal from someone's wife or girlfriend. Their presence just added more weight on my back, the kind of pressure that came down on the sunburnt skin of my shoulders and made me tired. Behind me, the neighborhood was quiet, and I wondered if they were watching while I kicked up the loose steps and fumbled with the door, closing it behind me. They always liked the show.

The house was empty, the crowd of oil-stained leather jackets congregated around the grill on the back porch. They didn't see me. I didn't want them too. The kitchen was deserted, too, half-full bags of chips rolled up and discarded on the counter, the remnants of some dirty cutting boards and bowls left in the sink. I turned the faucet on and thought about plunging in, letting the cool water run up my arms and rubbing it over the back of my neck. More laughter drifted in from outside, the screen door slamming shut as someone came inside.

"Aw, shit, Mia, I didn't know you were here."

I didn't look up as she walked over, bent at the waist over the sink.

"You alright, kid?" Emily was Dad's girlfriend, one of the few girls that was actually a constant around the house, and she was always over. She wore fake fingernails that I could feel on the bare skin of my back, rubbing circles. She was trying to make me feel better. "Where's Lou?"

"She's at the hospital," I murmured, and straightened, meeting her eyes. One of the only things I liked about the girls that hung around the guys from the garage was that I knew I could be honest with them. "She punched this guy in the face while we were trying to buy beer."

She grimaced. "I told you if you ever need anything you could ask me, baby."

I cringed a little at the pet name, shrugging. "My dad'd be pissed at you."

"What he doesn't know won't hurt him, right?" She grinned. "I'll head over there after this. Come eat."

I thought about Lou and her hand, and the beer that Emily was going to buy for us, and the broken car in the parking lot outside the garage while I shuffled behind her, feeling sticky and sick. The heat can do that you. That's what Dad had told me an hour before, wiping down dirty sockets and drill bits with a black-stained rag, his eyes looking everywhere but at me. Texas can do that to you, all heat and sand and dying grass.

"Mia!"

"Hey, Roach," I said, low, stepping down onto the deck.

The old man beamed up at me, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. He was one of the older guys that worked at the garage, and he was rough around the edges, all long, gray hair and cigarettes and the flask that he kept in his shirt pocket everyday. Everyone called him Roach for reasons that I didn't understand and had never tried to, the same reasoning behind it that had given Pin his nickname, and all of the others their garage-wide names.

Then, Roach just grinned at me, arms crossed over his chest. "You walk here?"

I nodded, falling back into the chair beside him.

"What happened to the car? Thought you loved that thing."

"It's been dying for awhile," I muttered. "I don't know what's wrong with it. Dad has the keys."

"He'll fix it up for you, huh?" He smiled at me, still, leaning back in his chair. "You don't have a ride til then though—that sucks."

It was my turn to grin, my eyebrows coming together. "Are you offering?"

He almost snorted, shaking his head. "You _know _your Dad'd cut my dick off if he saw you on the back of my bike. Looks like you're hoofin' it til he gets it fixed up, kid."

"Yeah, right," I groaned, rubbing my eyes. "Lou and me both, I guess."

"Hey—where is that kid? You leave her behind on the road?"

"She broke her hand," Emily chimed in, setting a bottle of Guinness on the table in front of me. "She's down at the hospital, right, Mia?"

I nodded, staring at the dirt on my sneakers, the same worn high tops I had gotten years and years before, not saying anything. She was going to be pissed when she got back from the hospital, and her mom equally if she found out where we were. Dad would probably tell her, trying to pull the diplomatic card that he always claimed after things like this happened. His diplomacy always ended up favoring on whoever wasn't me—whoever didn't look like Mom or remind him of her. He hated me for that.

The conversation picked up as one of the guys dropped a plate of burgers on the table, and I offered my seat to somebody, cradling the full bottle of beer as I stepped back into the house. My head hurt. The beer was too heady, and felt thick in my throat as I swallowed it, but I drank it anyway, downing the entire bottle as I shuffled down the hall toward my room. The house was too hot. There were a few pictures hanging on the walls—of Emily and Dad, of the guys, a few of Lou's parents and Dad and Emily together, smiling couples for the camera. Lou and I's senior pictures were immortalized behind glass in the living room for everyone to see, done by Emily the fall before.

I felt angry tears in my eyes when I reached my room, quietly closing the door behind me. Lou's things from the day before were still scattered all over my floor, the mess of sheets bunched at the end of my bed. I could still hear the conversations from the backyard, and the noise of a motorcycle pulling up in the driveway, the engine cutting away to reveal the empty quiet of summertime. Someone outside yelled out _Jay!_, Dad's club name, as the screen door shut. The empty beer bottle looked stupidly in place with the mess of old books and notebooks on my bedside table, like it had always been there. Dad hated me. I wanted to tell everyone that.

In bed, I listened to their conversation in the way that I had always been taught not to. Nobody liked a snoop, even though it was what Lou and I had always been—the only way we had been able to survive around the garage was because we had stuck around after hours, tucked beneath one of the windows of the clubhouse behind the garage. We heard everything that they didn't want us to. I could hear, then, Dad saying something about the next meeting—not tonight, but tomorrow, and heard the click of a lighter as he lit a cigarette, the others offering a few comments too low for me to hear.


	2. chapter two

Lou's cast was pink, already full of the smudged signatures from the guys at the shop, all fingerprints and smeared ink. Sitting on her back porch, she glared off at the grass in her backyard and the house past the fence, lips set in a tight frown. She was wearing the same jeans she had worn the day before, speckled with old paint, an unlit cigarette in her hand. Her neighborhood was one of the old housing developments that had gotten all overgrown with weeds after people started moving out to bigger, newer houses, and all of the people that couldn't afford to move away had stopped caring about lawns and the chipping paint. She lived in the only house on the block with a fresh coat of paint and cut grass. She hated it. All of the neighbors, mostly families, hated her, too.

"I'm grounded," she muttered, reaching across the table for a lighter. "And my mom works first shift now. I don't know what to do."

"They're having a meeting tonight at the bar," I sighed, picking at a loose thread on my shorts.

"Do you know what it's about?"

"No, I didn't hear," I muttered. "Think you can sneak out?"

She groaned a little, shaking her head. "I don't know, dude. My mom is _pissed._ She's mad at your dad, and stuff. And after what happened you with and Mario—" She lit her cigarette, taking a long, slow drag. "She doesn't want me over there."

"I know, I know."

"You were pissed, huh? About that asshole?"

"Yeah."

"You should've hit him." She looked at me honestly then, her dark eyes big. "With whatever."

I looked off at the freshly cut grass in her backyard and took a long, deep breath. As if I didn't know that I should have hit him—punched him, even, just to remind him that I wasn't one of the junkies that hung around the clubhouse at night, or one of the whores that the guys brought back from the city. A part of me wanted to do it just to prove it to myself, but it felt stupid, and I was glad that I hadn't just because I knew that I would have had to face Dad afterwards. He hadn't mentioned it to me, only saying something about my car being at the shop, still dead, and dinner in the fridge before he rode off with Emily, the buzz of his bike dying slowly against the sound of traffic and afternoon. I wanted to hate him for it, and wanted to mention it to Lou—his coldness, and distance, and the way he always looked at me like I had done something wrong even when I hadn't. She knew it all.

"Did he, like, try to—"

I swallowed thickly, shaking my head. "No. I mean, kind of, but not really."

"You should've done it, dude," she breathed, cigarette smoke rising up and away.

She would have done it. This was the fault line in our friendship, the difference in our personalities. She had always been angry at nothing, ready to strike at anything that she didn't agree with. Dad had told me once, when we were little and Lou was expelled from our middle school for fighting, that her dad had passed it down. That was why he, more than any of the other guys, was in and out of jail over and over again. He couldn't control his temper, and neither could Louise.

She finished the cigarette and stared at me blankly. "I'll see if I can get out of the house."

~ S O A ~

Emily left the beer on my nightstand, nestled between my alarm clock and a row of worn books that I had stolen from the town library a few years before, a note mentioning that she was going to be at the clubhouse all night.

Before I left, I shoved two cans of the beer in the bag I slung over my shoulder, slamming the front door behind me. The sun was sinking down beneath the houses on the opposite side of the street, casting long shadows behind me as I started to walk, scuffing my feet. It was still hot, a kind of still heat that let in the low hum of the freeway on the other side of town, and the high pitched wail of police sirens from the main road. The garage and the attached clubhouse were two miles from the house—two miles that seemed like twenty that night, dragging on and on as the world grew dark and cars drove by with headlights that shone over me and then drifted away, the speed of the cars passing brushing my hair up and away from my face.

The clubhouse was too lit up for a Tuesday night, rows of unfamiliar bikes casting shadows beneath one of the streetlights from the other side of the parking lot. The emblem of the devil—painted all black and red on the white wall of the clubhouse—was illuminated with spot lights, staring down the road toward me as I walked. I skirted the parking lot to the back of the clubhouse, easing myself over one of the old, rusted chain link fences that cut off the garage's property from the business next door. There were no windows on this side, just locked doors that led into some of the backrooms in the garage and the clubhouse, and thin walls that let through the laughter and conversations. Lou was the one that found it—what we had decided to call our secret spot years and years before, an alleyway between the two buildings that was almost too narrow to go down, big enough just for us to sit with our legs drawn up to our chests. That was where we hung around when we were around the clubhouse at night, digging our noses into the shit we weren't supposed to know about.

Lou was already there, lying on her back in the middle of the spot, one arm over her eyes and the other—casted—over her chest. "You got beer?" She asked, sitting up.

"Only two," I murmured, and sank down next to her, opening my bag. "Hear anything good?"

"Nah." She popped the tab and took a long sip, sighing as she swallowed. "All the same old shit."

How many hours had we spent there, drinking whatever alcohol that we could get ourselves or have someone else buy for us, Lou chain smoking her Camels and me breathing in her secondhand smoke. Countless—and the number had only grown as we got older, finding sanctuary in the dark, far from the suburbs and the endless cruelty of school and the hard eyes of all the guys that worked at the garage. That night, I leaned back against the cool brick of the clubhouse and closed my eyes, trying to clear my mind. The conservation coming from inside was quiet and muffled, boring, low voices repeating information that we had heard a hundred times before.

The gunshot was so loud that Lou and I both dropped our cans at the same time, our bodies jerking away, a whispered _fuck!_ the only sound that passed between us. The seconds that followed—agonizingly silent and still—seemed like hours, and then the immediate and rapid fire pop of one shot after another was only worse, too loud, shaking me as Lou and I climbed to our feet, the fizzing cans of beer discarded on the ground behind us.

"What the fuck is happening?" Lou whispered, wrapping an arm around me as we teetered toward the fence, knees knocking together. "Mia. _What is going on?"_

"I have no idea," I hissed between clenched teeth, hauling my body over the chainlink in one movement. "Come on. Come on!"

The gunshots had stopped, and the world slipped back into the horrible quiet, the noise of sirens low-pitched and distant, cutting through the stillness of the night around us. Lou and I rounded the building, ducking into the darkness of the garage, shoulders touching. I could feel my body shaking, a knot of worry and fear welling up in my stomach, and I fought it away, running nervous hands through my hair. The door of the clubhouse opened, and Roach spilled out, a gun falling out of his hand, shirt shining wet and slick under the streetlight.

"Roach!" Lou shouted, leaning into the light. "What the fuck?"

"What the hell are you—why are you here?" He looked at us incredulously, hands moving around his body like he was looking for something. "You alright, girls? You two okay?"

"We're fine," Lou offered, voice low. She glanced back at me with big eyes, eyebrows drawn together. The sirens were getting louder.

"The cops," I muttered, and stepped out of the garage. "Roach, get over here! The cops are coming, man, they're gonna—" I swallowed thickly, my eyes searching the empty doorway of the clubhouse. "The cops are gonna be here in, like, two seconds."

"Nah," Roach offered, straining a little. "Look, you hear me, girls? Get the fuck outta here. You gotta start driving and don't look back, alright? Get to Albuquerque. They'll help you out down there, alright?"

I looked at him, confused, and started to shake my head. "What are you talking about?"

"You girls are gonna have to run," he said seriously, kicking the gun he had dropped in our direction. "Take it." When I started to shake my head, he shook his. "Take it. Look in those drums in the garage—" He glanced toward the main road, where the wailing of the sirens was coming louder and louder. "—there'll be guns there, and ammo. Take it all. Get what you need and go, girls."

When the police cars pulled into the lot, Lou yanked me back into the garage, and we slid into the darkness against the wall, trying to control our breathing. My eyes raked over the cars on the opposite side of the lot—my car was there, looking dusty and bent out of shape, among the few newer, expensive cars that the guys had fixed in the shop. We would have to take one of those.

"You thinking?" Lou asked from beside me, her voice low, shaky.

"One of those cars," I mused, my eyes flickering between the cars and the parking lot and the low oil drums on the other side of the garage. "The guns?"

"We have to take them," Lou said confidently, ducking down as a flashlight worked its way into the darkness of the garage. "_Shit!_ Get down."

An officer stopped short in one of the wide garage bays, his flashlight flickering around the tools and the cars, moving over Lou and I, crouched behind one of the cars, without stopping. He stood there for a moment and looked into the darkness, his facial features marred by the darkness, and then turned back, yelling something about a warrant.

"If they find the guns, they're screwed," I breathed, realizing, and started toward the oil drums, Lou on my heels.

"Take them all," she whispered, pressing close to me. "And then we gotta run."

~ S O A ~

**Ten Dead, One Injured in Motorcycle Club Shootout**

**Canyon—**A meeting between two local motorcycle clubs turned for the bad late Tuesday night.

Locals describe the sound of gunshots at around 12:30 AM, shortly before the Potter County Sherrif's Department responded to a call about a possible shooting at the "clubhouse" of the local motorcycle club Satan's Servants. According to a source, the Satan's Servants had a planned meeting with another motorcycle club, the Mayans, Tuesday evening.

Both Satan's Servants and Mayans are "one percent" motorcycle clubs, paying homage to a claim by the American Motorcycle Association that "99% of motorcyclists are law-abiding citizens," implying that they—the one percent—are not. The Mayans involved in the shoot-out were supposedly members of the Amarillo chapter, while the Satan's Servants involved were all members of the club's mother, or founding, chapter.

Among the ten dead are Satan's Servants club President, Robert Paride, 45; Vice-President Jacob "Jay" Thompson, 39; Thompson's longtime girlfriend, Emily Reed, 31; Satan's Servants members Ethan "Pin" Simmons, 38, Ford "Nixon" Tull, 47, and Chris "Sonny" Sommers, 36; and Mayans members Carlos Ramirez, 21, Mateo Navarro, 20, and Kevin Quinones, 25.

The lone survivor, Jean "Roach" Gibson, 58, was taken into custody by Potter County Deputy Sheriff Jacob Raddick at the scene of the crime, and is currently recuperating from abdominal injuries sustained during the shootout in Baptist St. Anthony's Hospital in Amarillo. He is expected to be detained without bail.

- Marcus Everett, Amarillo, July 9th


	3. chapter three

**AN: Thank you so much to everyone that followed/favorited/reviewed! You guys rock :) **

**I also just wanted to mention that I _know_ this story is slow to start, and I'm annoyed at myself for not being able to make it move along faster, but there are going to be more and more Sons characters that you know and recognize in the coming chapters (including this one), so just be ready!**

**Thanks for reading again! :***

~ S O A ~

**Now**

The bruises looked a lot worse under the fluorescents.

I regarded my reflection with an air of contempt, running my hands through my mess of unwashed hair. Greasy didn't suit me.

Neither did bruises, but there was nothing I could do about those—no shower that would rinse off the purplish circle painted over my eye, or the deep red and yellow of dried blood and bruised skin on my split lip. The harsh light in the bathroom was jarring, and everything on my face seemed more pronounced. I looked tired and broken and felt the same, taking a long minute to stare at my dirty clothes and the darkness from lack of sleep under my one un-bruised eye. I started braiding my hair as I walked out of the bathroom, tugging and pulling the knotted strands until they resembled something that looked like I had done messy on purpose, and hoped the rest of me looked the same.

Outside, it was just light; the sun was starting to come up over the long stretch of paved parking lot, pale light that came down over the eighteen wheelers and low buildings. The rumble of one of the huge trucks starting up had woken me up suddenly, shocking me awake. I hadn't even meant to fall asleep in the first place—just take a break, close my eyes for a little and drink some coffee so I could get back on the road.

My cell phone seemed too loud when it started to ring, shrill bells cutting through the quiet early morning. I faced the traffic moving on the highway, tiredly rubbing at a stain in the middle of my shirt. "Yeah?"

"It's me." Lou sounded equally tired, her voice low, rasping words into my ear. "I need your help."

I sighed a little to myself, kicking at the ground. "What's going on?"

"I'm up to my neck in shit in California," she murmured. "Got the Italians grinding my ass, and now the fucking Nords are looking for me. I don't even _know_ those guys."

"How the hell did that happen?" I mused, closing my eyes as I pinched the bridge of nose.

"I don't know, and I don't know how to get out of it," she said, and suddenly sounded sad. "I think something's wrong with my car, too. Think it's the brake line, so of fucking course I'm stuck out on the side of the god damn highway."

"God damnit," I hissed, eyeing a fresh bruise that I hadn't seen before blooming on my knee. "Yeah, I'll be there. Where the hell are you?"

"Somewhere off the interstate. Camped out here last night, too. Italians tried to follow me, but—_shit_. Hang on. I called a fucking mechanic." There was rustling on the other end, and the noise of the phone being put down, and then quiet, interrupted a little by the soft noise of a truck, and dim voices.

I let the phone fall from my ear a little, and climbed back in my car, leaning back into the reclined seat. The car stank like stale air and blood and dirty clothes. The t-shirt and cut off jean shorts I was wearing were the last "clean" clothes that I had, the only ones that hadn't been touched by blood or dirt, and even then my shirt—once white—was stained and grubby looking, hanging loose and misshapen off of my shoulders.

"Mia?" Lou's voice called out to me, bringing the phone back closer to my ear. "You gotta get out here, man. Soon as possible, okay?"

"You okay?" I murmured, eyes closed. I could hear the hint of something that I didn't like in her voice—fear, or worry, or some mixture of the two.

"Yeah, I—" She stopped and started again, sounding strained. "Charming, California, Mia. You got that? I'm in Charming. I gotta go."

The line went dead with an abrupt buzz and silence, and I sat up, staring numbly at the phone in my hand. _Change of plans,_ I mused to myself and shoved the key into the ignition, pulling my seat up to meet my back. As I accelerated onto the highway, I caught a glimpse of my face in the rearview—purple and yellow bruises and a swollen lip, looking like I was a battered abuse victim on some hell-bent mission. I could work that when I was around people I didn't know—people in the rest stops I paused at along the road, who always regarded me with the same mixture of pity and distaste, or the men that offered to go after the man that had done it to me. None of them would ever understand.

It had only happened a few times before, anyway—the black eyes, the cuts and bruises that I couldn't cover with clothes or long sleeves, things that Lou would end up seeing and asking me about. There were other things—cuts that had cooled into scars, bruises that had faded into nothing after awhile—that Lou didn't need to know about, didn't need to see. It was better that way.

~ S O A ~

Charming, California was one of the middle-of-nowhere towns that Lou and I generally tried to avoid, all run-down houses and dead grass and cracked pavement that _clicked_ under my tires as I drove. The sun was high in the sky, just past noon, the heat of the day coming in through my rolled down windows. As the town flickered past, I stared straight ahead, feeling the hard stares of the people that I drove by, though I couldn't be sure if they were staring at _me_ or just looking because I was unfamiliar, new, something shiny driving through their dusty town. It reminded me of home—Texas and summer and Lou and I kicking our way along one of the roads through downtown when my car was acting up, sitting side by side with beers that we had either stolen or had someone else buy for us. I caught my reflection in the mirror again and grimaced. _Jesus._ Times had changed.

Lou was sitting on the hood of her sedan in the parking lot of the only garage in Charming, her arms crossed over her chest, pissed off expression on her face. When she saw me, her mouth dropped open. "What the fuck did they do to you?"

I glanced around, taking in the few guys working in the shop and the clubhouse a few hundred yards from it, the Sons of Anarchy logo tagged across the wall. "They didn't like what I was selling," I murmured, glancing over her shoulder toward the car. "Did they look at it?"

"Not yet," she mused. "I said you'd look at it with me. I'm pretty sure it's just one of the brake lines—think _we_ can fix it. But, I mean—I got a little freaked out while I was out there, I didn't know…"

"Yeah." I nodded slowly, tossing my keys in through my open window. "Let's check it out."

Lou leaned into her car and then glanced back at me, watching as I kneeled down, peering into the darkness under the car. "It was smoking earlier. Car's such a piece of shit, man." She kicked emptily at one of the tires. "Hey—you alright?"

"I'm fine, Lou," I replied as I pulled myself under, shifting to the side when she came under with me.

"God damnit," Lou hissed from beside me, pointing toward the master cylinder and one of the brake lines connected to it, which was dripping fluid onto the pavement beside us. One of the brake lines was cut clean through, like it had been snipped in half with a pair of scissors. "Can't even drive the piece of shit."

"That, too," I murmured, directing her attention to one of the wheels in front of us, where a mass of rust covered what had to have been one of the cylinders. "Jesus."

"Everything alright, ladies?"

I started at the sound of the voice, feeling Lou pull herself out from under the car. I did the same a few seconds later, squinting into the sunlight.

The man was tall, and had a thin, trimmed beard, and bright blue eyes that were pinned on Lou, his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes jumped and met mine, searching my face and then down my body and back up, stopping at my lip, and then back to the bruise around my eye.

"The brake line," I muttered, and moved toward them. "Dripping brake fluid all over. Looks like somebody cut it, to be honest. And one of the wheel cylinders is almost solid rust—same side as the broken line."

He just looked at me, seeming surprised. "Your daddy give you those bruises?"

I narrowed my eyes at him, feeling a lie already forming in my mouth. "I fell down the stairs."

"Straight onto your face, huh?" He leaned in a little closer, surveying the damage. "Weird how that shit happens."

"The cylinder," I said, breaking away from him to look at the garage, where a few heads had turned in our direction. "Is there an—I don't know—an Auto Zone or something? We could probably do the work between the two of us...just—the parts, I mean…"

"No parts places around town," he said, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. "We buy wholesale. I mean—"

"Sell us the parts, and we'll do the work," Lou offered.

He looked between the two of us like he had never seen a woman before, eyes laced with confusion and his eyebrows drawn together in the middle, arms loose at his sides. "You know, I'm gonna just get Jax. That's what I'm gonna do."

I scoffed as he walked away, leaning my shoulder into Lou's. "No one ever thinks that girls can do anything."

"These guys are one percent, huh?" She glanced over at me shortly out of the corner of her eye, nodding toward the garage and the clubhouse beside it, the row of Harleys backed up against the back wall a few yards from where we stood. "Think they—?"

"No." I swallowed thickly, rubbing my eyes with the palms of my hands. "No one knows about us, Lou."

"Yeah," she murmured. "Yeah, I know."

We both watched as the dark haired man convened with another, pointing him in our direction, and as the second walked toward us with the kind of walk that all cocky boys seemed to have—the slightest limp, his shoulders back, eyes too haughty to meet ours. Beside me, Lou snickered a little, and turned toward me, shaking her head.

"Tig says you two are looking to do some work," he offered, easing a cigarette out of a flattened pack. "Think you can handle that kind of repair on your own?"

"Would we have asked if we couldn't?" Lou mused, all sarcasm and heat.

He grinned a little, holding his hands up. "Alright, alright. We can get you the parts, but you can't do the work. Pretty sure selling those parts to individuals breaks some kind of law. Nobody needs that shitstorm."

Lou stared at him with hard eyes, her mouth set in a thin line. "You gonna charge us for work, too?"

"Garage standard," he said quietly, shrugging. "Won't be more than a few hundred."

"A few hundred," Lou breathed, groaning a little. "Those parts wouldn't cost more than a hundred and fifty. You know that."

He shrugged again. "Nothin' else I can do, darlin'."

She pushed her hands back into her hair. "How long?"

"Week, maybe." He shrugged. "It's Monday; we the send the order out this afternoon, get them by Wednesday, probably. Then with the work, it'll probably be Friday afternoon—Saturday morning. It's a job. And we don't know the specs on the other cylinders in the wheels, or the brake pads. Could be a whole new mess."

"God damnit." Lou looked at me, her eyes big with annoyance and near helplessness. "Guess I'm stuck."

"I'll stay here with you," I offered, leaning back against the car. "We can have a fucking vacation."

The blonde man looked between the two of us, emotion masked behind cold eyes and a frown. "That work alright with you, then?"

"Yeah, whatever," Lou muttered. She watched numbly as the blonde retreated toward the garage, arms loose at his sides, and then directed her gaze toward me, unamused. "A vacation?"

I looked emptily at the parking lot around us, and thought about the half-dead town I had driven through. "A vacation, a break, whatever. I could use some sleep, anyway."

"The Italians," she bleated, staring at the ground. "Gotta hit I need to carry out."

"I'll take care of them," I said quietly, crossing my arms hard over my chest. "We can deal with it, okay?"


	4. chapter four

The blood, the blood, the blood.

"I swear they bleed more than anybody else," Lou hissed, grunting a little as she got to her feet, rubbing her hands against her legs. "I don't get it. I seriously don't." 

I nodded silent agreement, holding my hands out in front of me—the blood had splattered up my arms, onto my last clean shirt, all on my legs and my shoes. _Jesus fucking Christ._ It was everywhere, on everything. The dirt around the hole below us was stained deep brown and red, thick with it. 

"Guinea bastards," she breathed. "We should burn that shirt, too." 

"Yours too," I murmured, pulling my ruined t-shirt over my head and throwing it atop the bodies, turning away. "You do the honors." 

She scoffed, but I heard the noise as she shuffled around, the low lurching of the gasoline as it poured out and the strike of the match against paper, the sudden moment the blaze came through and rose up into the darkening sky. The entire afternoon had disappeared while we were hunting the Italian assholes down, and another hour in the alley beneath their apartment, staring at the rusting fire escape and each other, thinking out loud. We didn't work together very often anymore. 

In the beginning, we were attached at the hip—we had been eighteen, or nineteen, still wet behind the ears. We drove the car that we had stolen off the lot at the old club garage, fixing it with new plates every few weeks, and sleeping in the backseat under fleece blankets. The first time we did it, we both cried. I don't know what it was—I don't know. The blood, I guess, and the body on the ground at our feet, and the suddenly horrifying feeling of the cold metal gun, pressed against my body in the waist of my jeans. It took us awhile to pull ourselves together and clean it up. I puked in the grass on the side of the highway a few hours later. 

It got easier with time. I rationalized all of it—if there's a hit on somebody, then they probably deserve to die; and if they deserve to die, then I'm just spurring the process on, making it faster. I never dragged it out, never made it painful. All of the drama just made everything more complicated, added onto the whole process. After awhile, it was all cut and dry, and the blood didn't faze me anymore, and I started not to see the facial expressions or hear the last few words they sputtered out before I pulled the trigger. I had always had a steady hand. 

"Should we sing fucking Kumbaya, or what?" Lou muttered from beside me, bringing me back to the woods and the fire burning in front of us. She crossed her arms, shirtless, too, and surveyed the damage, eyes flicking easily between the flames and my car a few hundred yards away. 

The fire spat glowing orange embers and ash into the sky, pungent black smoke filtering out over us. I covered my nose with my hands, closing my tearing eyes. The smell was one thing that I really, truly hated—the smell of fire and ash, but the smell of blood and the leftover stench that it left on my clothes, on my skin. Sometimes it felt like I would never be able to work the smell out of my hair, or out of the plush of the seats in my car—and that was the worst part, this sick reminder that always hung around of what I did to make my cash. There were times when I was driving with the windows closed for some uncontrollable reason, like rain or cold, and I swore that I could smell the low metallic noise of blood beneath the heavy perfume of the air freshener. I tried not to mind, but it wore at me.

"Call Laudone," I mused, rocking back on my heels. Goosebumps were starting to raise on my arms as night came in, the heat of the day dying as the sun faded away. "Tell him it's done so we can get the cash."

She nodded slowly, easing herself away.

I had chosen the air freshener in my car a few weeks before in a gas station in Arizona at three in the morning, feeling hungover even though I hadn't been drinking. It was supposed to be "Fresh Summers Day," but that night the smell made me feel like my brain was swelling too big for my skull. I dug through my bag until I found two wrinkled, relatively clean shirts, and smoothed one over my shoulders, tossing one toward Lou. The stale water from the bottles in the backseat was still warm from baking in the sun all day, and for a minute I pretended that it was a shower—a _real_ shower, not like the ones that I had taken in five minutes in truck stops on the side of the highway; one with my own soap, and towels ready for me when I got out, a mirror to rub the steam from. The vision faded quick as the fire popped and spat out glowing ash behind me, and I scrubbed hard at the blood on my legs, closing my eyes.

"He can meet us in an hour in Stockton," Lou said. "Think we can make it?"

I looked hard at the flames a few feet away, and started nodding, absentmindedly rubbing my arms and the semi-clean, damp skin. "Yeah. Gotta let this burn down, though."

~ S O A ~

"How'd you get those bruises?"

"Russians," I muttered, pushing damp hair away from my face. "Didn't carry something out the way they wanted me to. Doesn't matter anymore."

She glanced at me quickly. "You take care of the guy that gave it to you?"

I nodded flatly.

There was quiet for a moment, replaced with the noise of a lighter clicking. Lou took a long drag from the cigarette, breathing out toward the ceiling. It was almost two in the morning, and the motel around us was dead silent, the only noise the dim hum of the freeway a few miles away. We were both showered, clean, and tired, staring numbly at the flickering commercials on a boxy TV at the front of the room. The night had ended less than an hour before when we checked in, trying to avoid the stare of the manager as he gave us a room key.

"Mia," Lou said suddenly, sitting up. "Shit, man."

"What?" I mused, not moving.

She stared at me with big eyes. "I left a gun in the car."

"What?" I repeated, my eyebrows coming together as my eyes rolled over the mirth of water stains all over the ceiling.

"There's a 9mm in the glove compartment. And—and there's fucking ammo with the spare tire. _Shit._ Shit!"

I sat up slowly, watching as she climbed off the bed, looking frantically around the room. "Lou," I groaned. She fumbled around the room, swearing to herself, pulling on shoes and looking around for the keys. "Lou! Shut _up_ for a second, Jesus."

"If they find it—" She shook her head. "No serial number, Mia. They'll know something's up."

"Why would they go looking in the glove box?" I questioned, but started to slide off the bed, my mind running through the options. "Hey, if we go—they could find _us._ That looks just as fucking weird."

"Look," she said, standing in front of me. "They got the keys in their office. We go, say I forgot something—my cell phone or something. A Zippo. I don't know. Grab the shit, and we can go."

"Yeah," I murmured. "Alright."

We slipped out of the motel room twenty minutes later, hazily shuffling across the parking lot toward my car. Lou donated a pair of clean cut offs to my cause, impatiently jumping from foot to foot as I pulled them on and donned my boots after that, trying to make myself look normal again. We could have been anyone. I always repeated that to myself when we were together, heading into something that made me nervous or could end badly: we looked normal, like any two twenty five year old women. Beneath the bruises, we were inherently average—a few tattoos, a few scars, but nothing that made us stand out as what we were. As we drove through Charming, I crossed and uncrossed my fingers, trying to clear my head. 

This was a stupid idea—and a _stupid_ mistake on Lou's part, though I couldn't tell her that. One of our many rules was that we didn't do shit like this. We didn't forget guns in the glove compartments of cars that we had left to be worked on—we just didn't. As I paused at a stop light, I glanced at her from the corner of my eye, taking in her bent shoulders. She wouldn't look at me, too embarrassed.

When we pulled up to the curb outside Teller-Morrow Auto, I ripped the key away from the ignition, and we sat in silence for a minute, letting the engine come down, listening to the clicks and pops of the car.

"Are there people out there?"

"A few guys smoking," Lou offered, craning her neck. "Probably work at the shop. It'll be fine."

_We could be anyone._ Heads turned in our direction as we started across the tarmac, all men with eyes that cut toward us through the darkness, already laced with suspicion. Lou walked ahead of me, hoisting her bag further up her shoulder.

"Can we help ya, ladies?" A voice called out from somewhere within the group, heavy with a Scottish accent.

"Yeah," Lou replied, voice high. "I dropped my car off earlier, but I left my damn cell phone in it. Think you can let me in?"

"'Course I can, sweetheart," the man replied, standing up and coming away from the group. He nodded toward me, though his eyes didn't leave Lou. "She wit' ya?"

Lou didn't move. "Yeah. Mia, you good?"

"Mia," the man repeated. "There was a song about _Mia_—good song." He eyed me through the darkness, and I shifted under his gaze, crossing my arms over my chest. "Come on, lass."

They disappeared into a one of the buildings, and I was all at once alone, looking toward the dark group of men a few yard away. There was a haze of smoke over them, and in the dim light I could just make out the shapes of bodies, and beer bottles on the table in front of them, the white-on-black of their cuts over their backs. I hated that it felt so familiar to me—the cuts, and the dim smell of motor oil hanging in the hot nighttime air, and me standing on the outside of it all, just looking in. I had never wanted to be a part of it. I turned my back to the men standing at the table, looking over the row of Harleys and all of the cars in the lot past them, Lou's one of them. The bikers behind me started talking again, voices low. 

Lou's voice cracked a little when she called out for me, pulling me away from my thoughts. She was standing beside the Scot, shifting from foot to foot. "Come on, Mia."

We walked side-by-side, vaguely aware of the hard eyes on our back. Lou drove a beat up sedan that was a few years older than my Jeep, the shitty gas mileage made up for in inconspicuousness and ease of blending in. In the parking lot, it seemed to stick out like a sore thumb—dull paint job, and dust everywhere, a pool of brake fluid under the front tires.

I leaned back against the side of the car while Lou ducked into the other side, tossing things around. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the quick flash of black metal as she tucked the gun into her purse, straightening a little. 

"Shit," she hissed, her eyes meeting mine before flicking toward the crowd of people on the picnic table, who were all staring. "They know we're not getting a fucking cell phone, Mia." 

"Just play it off," I murmured, rounding the car to shut the passenger side door, . "Let's get outta here." 

"Ladies, ladies!" The first man that we had spoken to that afternoon stood apart from the table, arms held out. His curly hair was just illuminated by the distant, dim streetlights, blue eyes holding us in place. "Goin' so soon?"

Lou smirked a little, brandishing the prepaid cellphone we had bought together a few weeks before. "Got what we came for." She tossed the keys to the Scot. "Thanks."

"All ya came for the cell phone, huh?" The Scot asked, voice hard. He stood, followed by a few of the other men. "Nothin' else?"

"Think I can hide anything good in that piece of shit?" Lou laughed a little, kicking at the pavement.

The man that had spoken with us that afternoon came forward a little, all wild curly hair and mean eyes. "Nothin'?" He paused, looking both of us over, and in one motion had a gun of his own aimed at us, smirking. "C'mon, girls, we weren't born yesterday."

The men behind him did the same, the quiet noise of safeties clicking off greeting my ears.

I glanced between the guns there and Lou and my car, no more than twenty feet away, and thought of the ammo there, and the guns tucked into all of the hidden places I had been able to find. _God fucking damnit._ I kicked at Lou's heel, and slowly started to raise my hands.


	5. chapter five

**A/N: Hey guys! Sorry this took so long, but I'm back at school & finding time to write between homework/sports/etc is getting a little bit hard. Thanks to everyone who followed/favorited/reviewed, it means a lot! You guys are awesome :)**

~ S O A ~

"There had better be a god damn _good_ reason why I'm here right now," a loud voice called out from beyond the shuttered walls, the loud noise of a door slamming shut following.

Beside me, Lou groaned, rolling her head from one side to another. Our arms were tied behind our backs—with shitty tow rope, the kind of line tied onto a tow truck and a car to keep it from moving around—looped all around

wooden chairs, positioned facing the wall back into the bar.

The doors opened, and the blonde that we had spoken with earlier that afternoon appeared in the doorway, face incredulous when his eyes met ours. "_You two?"_ He emitted, glancing over his shoulder. "What the fuck?"

"This, man," the curly-haired man said, and tossed Lou's bag on the table, smirking when the handgun and four boxes of bullets spilled out, and dropped my bag on top of that. He pulled out the guns that I had kept in my car—the three of them, followed by all of my spare ammo. "No serial numbers on _any_ of that shit, man."

The blonde looked at the guns and then back at us. "What the _fuck?"_

A gray haired man joined them in the doorway. "What the hell is this?"

"I don't know," the blonde muttered. He nodded toward the curly haired man, who just nodded and left, shutting the door behind him. "You two—I don't even fucking know, Clay. Dropped a car off yesterday afternoon—gave me some bullshit about fixing it themselves."

Lou and I were quiet, staring evenly at the table. We had been through worse—dealt with more than some MC holding us down about some stupid guns and bullets in a car; anyone with eyes could have seen that by the way we were sitting, the way my black eye looked in the hazy light of their clubhouse. A part of me wanted to tell them that—say it straight to their faces that whatever they had to throw at us didn't mean shit. Nothing that any MC could do to me made me nervous. Another part of me thought that they might know that already, by the way the two exchanged low glances, their eyes dark as they took the two of us in.

"You two got some real fuckin' nerve," the gray haired man said, slow, and puffed out as he lit a cigar. "Somebody send you? AB? Russians?"

"You think we were _sent_ here?" I shook my head, rolling one of my shoulders. "To what? Admire this sweet little town?" Beside me, Lou scoffed. "No offense—it's not that nice."

"Don't play dumb, sweetheart," he mused. "You know exactly what I meant. Best bet is to get this playing games shit out of the way quick. You tell us the truth, make it easier on the both of us."

"Do motorcycle clubs hurt women?" Lou asked, voice high with feigned innocence. "I always thought there was some honor code about that kind of thing."

"Generally speaking," the blonde began, leaning down on the table in front of us, "that doesn't apply to bitches on our side of the law."

"Nobody sent us," I said after a moment of quiet, looking between the two men. "Her car broke down, we came here. That's the serious truth. Nothing against you—_any_ of you."

The blonde raised his eyebrows. "You expect us to believe that?"

I tried to shrug, shifting uncomfortably when I remembered my wrists were bound behind me. "You don't have to to, but that's all _I_ got. Nothing against the—" I paused and thought for a minute, eyebrows together. "—Sons of Anarchy. _Seriously."_

"Yeah, but why this?" The blonde asked, motioning toward the table. "What do two _women_ need this shit for?"

"Business," Lou murmured, voice low. She looked up at them slowly, shaking her head. "Everyone's gotta make money in this world, man."

Confusion washed over his face. "Business? You're trying to tell me that you two—what—smuggle guns?"

The gray haired man chuckled a little. "No, that ain't it. You two must be in pretty deep in this shit, huh?"

Lou glanced at me quickly, frowning hard. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You got guns, you got bullets, you got bruises." He tapped his cigar out on the table, watching the ashes fall before his eyes flicked toward me. "Probably got nothing in your names but those cars, right? And even those probably got illegal plates."

"If you think you're playing Sherlock Holmes, it's not fucking working," I muttered. "You're no detective, _prez._"

The man looked at me with dull eyes. "You're a piece of fucking work, you know that? Got no right to be talking to anybody like that."

"What're you gonna do?" I rolled one of my shoulders, grimacing at little at the rope burning at my wrists. "Call the sheriff? Have us fucking arrested. It wouldn't be first, and it won't be the god damn last, alright?"

"Mia," Lou murmured, narrowed eyes cut toward me. "Shut _up."_

The gray haired man shrugged his shoulders. "Killin' for money is a nasty business," he said, and sank down into a chair on the opposite side of the table. "'Specially when you're—" He breathed out smoke, motioning between the two of us vaguely. "—chicks like you two."

"Murder for hire?" The blonde echoed, eyebrows drawn together. "Damn."

Lou sighed, shifting in her seat. "This isn't an admission."

The gray haired man chuckled. "'Course not. I figured that shit out on my own."

I swallowed thickly, feeling Lou's eyes hot on the side of my face. "So you can untie us now," I offered. "And give us our shit. Between the two of us, this never happened, right? We can go."

"Nah, nah, nah," he said and shook his hands in front of him, cigar trailing smoke as it moved. "I'm seeing how this could work in _both_ our favors."

~ S O A ~

The guy they sent after me was fat and ugly, probably two hundred and fifty pounds of Ketel One and a Russian-American accent.

I knew that he was coming, anyway—it was partly my fault, this mess of chalk lines that inadvertenly pointed toward the Melnikov's, one of the Las Vegas Russian families that ran drugs and guns from Moscow to the West Coast. The bastard that beat me up was one of the lowlifes they hired to keep people in line and stand outside their hotel rooms. He was wearing a loose fitting suit that might've been designer—a gift from one of the bosses for a job well done—and gold rings that could've been cutting off his circulation in his fat fingers, all jewel encrusted to hurt when they met skin. He bested me, a few heads higher, a few punches ahead of me. He dragged me onto the pavement by my hair.

The Russians had to have known that they wouldn't get away with it. They liked playing those games. None of them ever held much regard for life or death, always nonplussed at the murder of one of their guys. To them, it was always about making money and meeting deadlines—everything else in between was just details that they often skimmed over. There had been a few men that didn't even have burials, left to rot in state afforded graves or decay into nothing in the middle of the desert. I left his body on the side of the highway outside of Vegas where I knew they would see it, two gunshots red on his forehead, my blood dry on his fists. It was easier that way.

Almost a week had passed, and the bruises were still ripe, sore to touch and worse on the eyes. Usually it took a few days for the swelling to go down, a few weeks for the color to fade completely. I had been lucky to get off with just bruises, all superficial shit that would go away. Others had been afforded stitches, broken bones. I wouldn't have let that happen.

The prospects on the opposite side of the room tried to avoid our eyes, leaning tiredly against the bar with their chins tucked against their chests. All of the real members had disappeared into the room where Lou and I had sat what felt like hours before, the doors slamming shut as the prospects ushered us toward a table by one of the windows. They served us beer and left us alone, watching timidly from the other side of the room.

"This is my fault," Lou mused, emptily shaking the ashes off the end of her cigarette. She breathed out over her shoulder and glanced back at me, head nodding toward the closed doors on the other side of the barroom. "I got us into this, man."

"I'm not blaming you," I muttered, stretching my legs out in front of me. "You know that."

She scoffed. "Yeah, I'm just blaming myself."

"All the matters is that we're okay." The beer the prospects had offered was warm and foaming, too heavy for the early morning, and I pushed it away from me across the table. I leaned in, my voice dropping a little. "We've been through worse, Lou."

She shrugged, finishing her own beer unceremoniously. "What're we gonna do about the—I mean, the others? The _Russians?_"

I groaned to myself and rubbed my eyes. "I don't have anything with them right now. I don't what _they're_—" I nodded toward the closed doors on the other side of the room. "—gonna get us into, but—I mean—"

"I don't fucking get this," she muttered, and sat back. "Let us fucking go. Who do they hate this bad?"

"Us." I looked at her with a smirk. "Nobody likes chicks in the business."

"It's too early in the morning for this shit," she whispered. "So much for our vacation, huh?"

I nodded emptily, my own tiredness coming back to me all at once. _When does this cycle end?_ It had been nine years since Amarillo—nine years spent running from the law and from the pissed off men that we always seemed to leave in our wake, all of the time trying to stay afloat in a business that was far from friendly. We had done well so far. This bullshit with the Sons was just going to be a mar on the record, something we could move on from in the next few years, forget about when it all came down to it. The taste of the heady beer at the back of my throat made me feel like I was going to be sick, the whole clubhouse around us reminding me of a time that I had tried hard to forget, and people that we had long since said goodbye to. It had been easier to push all of it away, and leave it in the past.

The parking lot outside was starting to lighten, the gray-blue of the early morning coming in through the hazy windows. It was almost five AM if the dingy clock on the wall was right—another night without sleep, and the beginning of another long, miserable day.

The door a few feet from us swung open suddenly, and a blonde man stepped in, glancing around the room until he saw the closed doors. "God _dammit,"_ he hissed, looking toward the prospects incredulously and then briefly at us. "Who the hell are you two?"

"Prospect!" He barked a few seconds later, and slid easily into one of the chairs at our table. "Get me a fucking drink."

"Can we help you?" Lou asked dryly, crossing her arms over her chest.

As he opened his mouth to respond, I cut in, leaning over the table to look in his eyes. "We're not club whores, if that's why you're over here."

"Damn," he said, and started to laugh a little, holding his hands up in front of him. "Then who the hell are you bitches?"

"Lou Green and Mia Taylor," Lou offered. "Murder for hire."

His eyebrows shut up into his hairline, his mouth dropping open a little. "What a fucking introduction. Well, ladies—" He held up the drink that the prospect had just deposited in front of him, grimacing as he took a long swig. "—It's a pleasure. Real good to meet you two.

Lou looked at him boredly. "And you are..."

"Kozik," he finished.

There was noise from behind the closed doors, and all at once they swung open, the bodies of a dozen pissed-off looking bikers filtering out into the barroom. A few paused to look at us and Kozik, shaking their heads, and the others either disappeared down a hallway or headed toward the bar. The blonde and gray-haired man that had held us stopped in the doorway, agitation seeping out from both of them in waves.

I got to my feet, feeling the hot eyes of the Sons as I crossed the room, Lou a few steps behind me. "Are we free to go now?" I asked, my lip curling at the smirk that came over both of their faces. "We're not your fucking captives."

"Somebody spit in your coffee?" He asked, motioning uselessly in the air in front of my face. "We don't handle club business til the sun's up."

I felt my face drop, mouth open as he started away from me. "Are you _fucking_ kidding me?"

A momentary quiet fell over the bar, and the eyes of all the men flicked between the two of us. I shifted from foot to foot, crossing my arms hard over my chest. Behind me, I heard Lou take a long, deep breath. _Calm down. Get angry, they'll get angry._ Nobody needed that.

"Look," I muttered, dropping my arms to my side. "We're both tired, hungry. We've had a long few weeks, and all of this shit is really starting to wear on my damn nerves. You want us as a business partner, whatever. We can do that. Just let us go."

He turned on his heel toward me, lip curled. "You better watch your _goddamn_ mouth, sweetheart. You two've been runnin' around like you fuckin' know something—it don't work like that here. You got that?" He looked me up and down, eyebrows raised in mock distaste. "You're lucky you're here. _Women_ that work on _our_ side of the law generally don't last in places like this."

My voice was low, throaty. "Is that a threat?"

"Call the fucking sheriff." He spat, my own words from earlier that morning thrown back in my face. "That all?"

I stared hard over his shoulder, my jaw clenched. "That's it."

"Good, good," he said, and eased away. "Hap, Tig. Take 'em outside."


End file.
